


The Hawkeye Initiative

by Ysabetwordsmith



Category: Marvel Cinematic Universe, The Avengers (2012)
Genre: Activism, Alternative Sexuality, Angst, Aromantic, Asexual Relationship, Asexuality, Boundaries, Canon-Typical Violence, Community: asexual_fandom, Dubious Consent, Dubious Morality, F/M, Families of Choice, Female Superheroes, Feminist Men, Feminist Themes, Friends to Lovers, Friendship, Internalized Misogyny, Men Being Stupid, Misogyny, Objectification, Protective Avengers, Protectiveness, Sexist Language, Sexual Content, Sexuality, Superheroes, Team Dynamics, Teamwork, Unconventional Families, Unconventional Relationship, Voyeurism, Vulgar Language
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-02-08
Updated: 2013-02-10
Packaged: 2017-11-28 16:12:29
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Rape/Non-Con
Chapters: 3
Words: 2,102
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/676336
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Ysabetwordsmith/pseuds/Ysabetwordsmith
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Someone is passing around lewdly rendered pictures of women. This makes Hawkeye very unhappy, so he decides to do something about it.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Clint Finds Some Pictures

**Author's Note:**

> I wrote this story for the [2013 Asexy Valentines Fest](http://asexual-fandom.dreamwidth.org/54675.html) over on the Dreamwidth community asexual_fandom. It's a gift for DW user aceofannwn who wanted some Avengers fanfic.
> 
> This story is probably milder than the warnings make it sound; there are a lot of discussions of things that have happened in the past, but there is no actual sex or violence during the story itself.

"I'm just saying, I think it's disgusting," Clint said. "I'm going to find that guy and shoot him in the crotch with an arrowhead full of itching powder."

"Clint, it's nothing. Men always see me as a sexual object. This is a _professional asset_ for me," Natasha said with a flip of her auburn hair. "Besides, if I cared to teach him a lesson, I'd track him down myself and pin him to the floor with knives. Just let it go. I can handle it." She flicked away the holographic image of herself in her catsuit, bent over a sewer grate to rescue a trapped child. A cartoon cock and balls had been drawn over the photo, pointed at her ass.

"Oh yeah? What about all the _other_ women he's done this to?" Clint said. He brought up another image, this one of Sue Storm in her underwear on a crowded sidewalk, clearly from before she gained complete control over her invisibility. This time there was a slobbering tongue over her panties and two eyeballs tucked into her bra.

"Do you think Sue can handle this?" Clint said. "Do you think she should _have to?"_

"I don't think she'll have to, not after Johnny sees that picture of his sister. Somebody's house or car is about to get a flame job," Natasha mused. She emailed the image to the Human Torch.

"The guy who shot these is not the only one, either; he started a craze," Clint said. He pulled up a bunch more images of different female superheroes, all in suggestive poses, most with vulgar additions scribbled on.

Natasha trailed a long scarlet fingernail over _Suk me, She-Hulk!_ and said, "Someone clearly wants to die in the most painful and embarrassing way imaginable."

"The SHIELD promotional posters are not helping," Clint said. Those had come out after the Battle of New York in an effort to boost public recognition and appreciation for the heroes. "This says nothing about your skill in weapons, interrogation, or stopping an alien invasion. It just waves your buns in the air." Natasha's poster featured her leaning over a railing to shoot at someone below.

She shrugged. "They wanted to keep my face away from the camera."

"But look what kind of crud it's inspiring," Clint protested. He fanned out another batch of images, drawn like posters or magazine covers, featuring various superheroes and ordinary women in ridiculous arrangements and outfits. "These poses, honestly -- I have personally known contortionists who could not do these things. It makes me want to hunt down the men responsible and put _them_ in the same position."

"It's hardly fair to drag someone into the media when they didn't sign up for that," Natasha said.

"Tell that to _these_ dicks," Clint said. "Some of those pictures are of gals who just happened to catch the wrong person's eye."

"Men are dicks, yes. Just ignore them. It's not like you can do anything to stop this. They don't seem to be breaking any laws," Natasha said. 

Clint closed his hands to crush the offensive images out of existence. "We'll see about that," he muttered.


	2. Clint Thinks About Sexual Dynamics

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Clint thinks about how his background and Natasha's play into the current problem, and what he can do about the situation.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This part holds most of the sexual discussion as Clint considers his orientation, and Natasha, and their relationship, and how all that drives his feelings about the current situation. If you dislike reading even oblique discussions of sex, you can skip this, and Part 1 + Part 3 will still mostly make sense as a story about Clint dealing with dirty pictures.

The thing was, Clint didn't like seeing women mistreated that way. It bothered him deeply. He had discovered this -- somewhat to his surprise -- while figuring out his own sexuality. He felt that respect made up an important part of romance. Although he was aromantic himself, he still recognized the power in it and wished that people would not treat it so carelessly. It wasn't just romance, either. If you didn't respect people, it undermined _all_ your relationships: romantic, sexual, professional, familial. He had painful personal examples from most of those.

The more Clint thought about this, the more it bugged him. He knew how easy it was to develop bad habits -- you started treating people a certain way, and it got harder and harder to stop, even if you wanted to. He had learned how to pick up girls from his brother. That had not been a good thing. It had taken years for Clint to break some of those patterns, once he realized how destructive they were to him and everyone else. That caused problems of its own.

If you were sexual but not romantic, and you wanted to form permanent bonds but _not_ ones based on lust, that tended to confuse folks. They didn't know what to do with you. That made it hard to get laid. Clint sort of needed to get laid, at least occasionally. He looked on sex like any other bodily need, such as eating, for example -- it was sometimes enjoyable, sometimes just a thing that needed doing. He _preferred_ to do it with people he knew and liked, but that wasn't always possible. So he resorted to one-night-stands or professionals. Such arrangements worked reasonably well for him.

Natasha was different. To her, sex was a _weapon_. She used it to destroy people, and it proved far more devastating than a knife or a gun. She never responded sexually to anyone except on a mission, or some other situation when she stood to gain something by using it to manipulate people.

Neither did she date. Natasha seemed to have no interest in romance, or if she did, she never expressed it. "Love is for children," she often said, though her actions sometimes hinted otherwise. Clint knew she loved him; she just wouldn't mention it, and it wasn't the kind of love that unobservant people sometimes imagined between the two of them. Clint loved her right back; he just wouldn't mention it, because it would make her uncomfortable. That hurt, a little, but better him than her.

Natasha was ... confused about sexuality, outside of mission context. (Clint couldn't blame her for that. Sometimes figuring out sex felt like trying to reverse-engineer one of Tony's machines without benefit of the instruction manual.) Oh, she could fake it _brilliantly_. Nobody ever doubted that she felt or was whatever she wanted them to think of her. She just couldn't turn that knowledge around and apply it _to herself_. Whatever her original orientation might have been, it was obliterated during her training. Even free, she tended to avoid looking inside herself, because she didn't like what she saw there. That was no way to learn about the nuances of your own sexuality.

Her background spilled over in other areas, too. Natasha's boundaries had been removed along with her orientation. That meant she often didn't understand that certain things were _wrong,_ or why they were wrong, or how they could hurt people. She relied on her handler to tell her what was right and wrong. On a mission, she might let men call her all kinds of filthy names, or fuck her, or even think they were raping her. Outside of a mission, she might strike back if harassed, but more often she simply ignored it and let the perpetrators get away with it. 

Clint hated the fact that Natasha put up with such nonsense because she didn't think it mattered, or worse, didn't think _she_ mattered, enough to put a stop to it consistently. It bothered him that her decision to lash out, play along, or ignore was always based on what she could gain from the situation, not what was wrong with the situation.

He hated it, because he was her partner and she was his. Clint and Natasha were bound together by something deeper than love or marriage. They'd fought together, saved each other's lives, saved the world together. They _relied_ on each other. They _trusted_ each other in ways that neither of them trusted anyone else. They were two halves of one perfectly honed weapon, fitting together like bow and arrow. He wasn't about to let some jerkoff with a camera fetish mess with that.

Clint knew what it was like to be remade. He understood what it was like to be without boundaries, to have them all scooped out and thrown aside like seeds from a gutted pumpkin. He was just lucky that he'd gotten his boundaries back. Natasha had done that for him, had pounded his walls and his rules and his _self_ back into his head when he couldn't do it on his own. What had been done to her was nothing as short or simple as what had been done to him, and it couldn't be fixed with a quick kick in the head. There were other ways to manage a cognitive reboot, though, and even if they were a lot slower that wouldn't stop Clint from taking care of his partner. Maybe he couldn't give her back all her boundaries, but he could at least show her where some of the lines _were_.

Clint had an idea what to do. He just needed to talk to someone else who believed that women should be treated better than they usually were, and ask for help.


	3. Clint's Plan Unfolds

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Tony and Bruce discover Clint's plan. Clint has some explaining to do.

Clint positioned himself strategically in the air duct and listened.

Tony was laughing his head off. "Bruce, look at this, look -- it's our very own Cupid in a miniskirt!" he said. "The artwork is pretty good, and wow, check out the way he's got his ankle up by his ear. Do you think he can really do that? I mean, he was in a circus and all."

"Um ... Tony, I don't think Clint would want you to see those pictures," Bruce said. "They look like something made for, I don't know, a girlfriend maybe."

"Can't be, Birdbrain doesn't _do_ girlfriends, remember? Or boyfriends. Just fuckbuddies and quickies. You don't give photographic evidence and pinup art to one-night-stands or hookers," Tony said.

"That still doesn't make it okay to dig into his data storage and amuse yourself with his very personal pictures," Bruce said.

"I didn't get them from his files, I found them on the net," Tony said.

"Well that's not good," Bruce said.

Footsteps sounded below, the careful tread of a heavy person walking lightly. Steve, then, because Thor _clomped_.

"Hey Capsicle, have you seen these wacky pictures of Clint?" Tony asked.

"Yes. I drew them for him," Steve said.

Loooong pause. Pregnant pause. Possibly pregnant with _twins_ (or even triplets, counting the Hulk) pause.

"In what world is that actually supposed to make some kind of sense?" Tony said plaintively. "You drawing naughty pictures of _Hawkeye?"_

"Clint, please come down and explain the plan to Tony and Bruce. They don't get it yet," Steve said to the ceiling.

Clint sighed and swung down from his hiding place. It was hard to sneak up on someone who could hear your heartbeat.

"I found these nasty pictures of Natasha," he explained. "Some guy was taking photos of her in suggestive poses and adding lewd doodles to them. It's not just her; he does it to other female superheroes too. Then he got a bunch of other dicks doing the same thing to even more women. Sometimes they change ordinary clothes to lingerie. They also started doing smutty art like posters or magazine covers, that's worse than the photos. So I decided to do something about it, and I asked Steve to help me."

"By tarting yourself up like a ten-dollar whore?" Tony asked.

"By rendering myself in the exact same pose and outfit from pictures that objectify women like that," Clint said. "You know, the thing women fear most is being murdered. The thing men fear the most is _being laughed at_. I figured that putting myself on display like this would make it look as ridiculous as possible, and show people that it's stupid and wrong to objectify _anyone_. If people make fun of the whole thing, it'll be harder for the jerks to get their jollies from it. Then maybe they'll quit, or at least do it less often."

"Huh," Bruce said thoughtfully. "That's ... not a bad plan."

Tony clapped his hands together. "Well, I'm happy to help," he declared. "I may not be an artist like Spangles here, but I'm a genius at CGI. Come down to the lab for some scans, and I'll edit that tight little ass of yours right into any photo and costume you want."

"Sure, that sounds great," Clint said. "Thanks, Tony!"

Just then, Steve looked up from his glowing tablet and beckoned to Clint. "Check this out -- _I_ didn't draw this one."

Clint leaned over to see a scratchy colored marker illustration of him aping the tawdry pose that Jubilee had landed in after jumping off a balcony to tackle a villain. "Score!" he said, emailing a copy to Natasha. "The Hawkeye Initiative has gone viral."

 

~ END ~

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> [The Hawkeye Initiative](http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/) is real, in the sense of being a project to raise awareness of how women are sometimes portrayed.  
> 
> 
> _ "How to fix every Strong Female Character pose in superhero comics: replace the character with Hawkeye doing the same thing." -Gingerhaze _
> 
> _ A blog with Clint "Hawkeye" Barton being placed in the same provocative, female poses that are featured in superhero comics _ .  
>   
>  _The Hawkeye Test: “If your female character can be replaced by Hawkeye in the same pose without looking silly or stupid, then it’s acceptable and probably non-sexist.”_
> 
> Special thanks to [KoraRubin](http://archiveofourown.org/users/KoraRubin) for finding this picture of a man cosplaying [Clint Barton in a Hawkeye Initiative pose](http://www.pinterest.com/pin/318418636124969318). Dude, you rock.
> 
> I got to wondering how such a project might develop in the Avengerverse. How would Clint, who is a pretty tough guy but also a real smartass, react to it? He might think it was funny, or he might totally freak. Then I had the idea: what if he started it _himself?_ What would motivate him to do that? Who would he enlist to help? Where would it go from there?
> 
> So I did a little digging into the background of the project and its character context. There are discussions on [Know Your Meme](http://knowyourmeme.com/memes/the-hawkeye-initiative), [Wikipedia](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Hawkeye_Initiative), [io9](http://io9.com/5964969/the-hawkeye-initiative-redraws-absurd-superheroine-poses-with-hawkeye), [The Mary Sue](http://www.themarysue.com/introducing-the-hawkeye-initiative/#0), and [Geek Sugar](http://www.geeksugar.com/Hawkeye-Initiative-Tumblr-26173196). I found this cool analysis of [Hawkeye and Black Widow](http://hellotailor.blogspot.com.au/2012/05/costumes-and-characters-of-avengers_31.html) in the movie, which paints Hawkeye as what I call a heronet (a male heroine, the one who gets rescued) with all the whumpage and the bared skin. Also related is the imagery and discussion in "[Avengers Booty-Assemble](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/05/11/avengers-movie-poster-sexist_n_1507914.html)" which swaps the poses of all the Avengers in the movie poster.
> 
> EDIT 4/15/13: The Hawkeye Initiative has [spread to cosplay](http://io9.com/5988397/hawkeye-initiative-cosplay-lets-the-guys-show-off-their-rears-for-a-change).
> 
> EDIT 5/15/13: A similar female-to-male character switch has effected real change in a contemporary workplace with "[Hawken](http://thehawkeyeinitiative.com/post/50432219744/special-guest-edition-the-hawkeye-initiative-irl)," featured on the Hawkeye Initiative tumblr. 
> 
> The story turned into a kind of character study of the Avengers, their relationships with each other and their self-awareness, and how they often use creative problem-solving methods when a straightforward approach is impractical. So here's Clint being the kind of quietly feminist man who feels that women should be treated like people, and who doesn't mind smacking down other men for being sexist jerks. He's protective of Natasha, even when she isn't necessarily protective of herself due to her background. Naturally he turns to Steve, the perfect gentleman, who conveniently happens to be an artist, for help with his project. Tony can be a bit of a jerk himself, and Bruce is a little clueless at times, but in the end they figure it out. And they stick together.
> 
> Sometimes, being a hero isn't about shooting bad guys. Sometimes it's just about saying, _This is not okay_.


End file.
